For organisations having a large number of customers to whom accounts or marketing material are mailed, it is clearly impractical to generate this mail manually. Accordingly, the process of printing material pertaining to an individual customer such as billing information and then inserting this printed material into an appropriately addressed envelope has been automated for some time.
Commonly, the insert material will be printed on standard cut sheet such as A4 using high speed industrial digital printers. The insert material is then folded and inserted into standard closed faced envelopes using highly specialised handling equipment. In some instances the envelopes may already be pre-printed with fixed information such as a company logo or a reply paid address. After insertion, the envelope is then printed with the corresponding address related to the personalised information contained in the envelope. These processes are capable of producing between 30 to 100 bulk mail out items per minute.
Clearly at such high processing speeds it is important to be able to have a system for online monitoring. Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a typical bulk mail item processing and integrity checking system in detail. Print file 10 containing names, addresses and any other personal information relevant to the mail out is formed from information contained in database 1. This file also contains instructions for generating a unique machine readable code such as a barcode for each sheet of material to be printed. This information is provided 11 to the printer 20 which prints standard cut sheet to form personalised documents 30 that includes a number of insert sheets which are then inserted into envelopes which are fed into the inserter 40 from a separate envelope supply 50.
To provide for online integrity checking of the system a process data file 120 is generated from print file 10. The process data file 120 contains a unique check reference for each printed sheet in addition to the corresponding addressing information. Before insertion into the envelopes the personalised documents 30 are scanned 90 and the machine readable code information is compared with the process data file 120 to verify that the correct documents have been printed. Confirmation of the printing step results in the corresponding address being provided to the envelope printer 60 for printing of the envelope resulting in a completed mail out item 70. This process necessarily assumes that the personalised documents 30 have been inserted 40 correctly into the envelopes. Whilst the envelopes 50 may have fixed information such as logos and reply paid addresses printed on them prior to address printing 60, there is no individual machine readable code which can be used for envelope tracking before the step of address printing 60.
As standard laser printers are often unsuitable for printing multiple layer items such as envelopes, the envelope printer 60 is typically an inkjet printer. Inkjet printers have a number of associated cost and quality issues when compared to laser printers. The mail out item 70 is then provided to the mail system 80. Optionally, an address reader 75 will read the address printed on the envelope so that a record of completed mail out items which are ready to be mailed can be maintained.
There are a number of serious disadvantages with this process. After insertion 40 of the personalised documents 30 into envelopes 50 there is no means to check that this step has been performed correctly before printing 60 of the envelope. If scanning 90 of the code and checking 91 with the process data file 120 has highlighted a problem before insertion then these documents may be out sorted 100 as shown in FIG. 1. However, once the envelope has been printed 60, the only way the process can be audited is by manually sampling 71 the mail out item 70 and scanning the code on the personalised documents 90 and comparing 110 this with the address on the envelope as set out in the process data file 120. If an error is found then the process must be stopped and a number of envelopes and contents must be manually removed to determine the extent of the error and then the process restarted.
Those mail out items which are incorrect must be reprinted and inserted at a later time. As small batches of reruns are inefficient, often a rerun is delayed until a significant number of mail out items require reprocessing. This causes logistical problems as composite lists of errors must be maintained. In addition, if pre-printed envelopes are required for the re-run then these must be re-sourced either from a warehouse store or supplier.
Another disadvantage of this process is that the process data file 120 is generated second hand from the original database 1 via the print file 10. This increases the likelihood of the process data file 120 becoming mismatched to the database 1. In some instances, bulk mail out items may be produced according to the print file 10 but due to a mismatch between this and the process data file 120 there will appear to be errors. Clearly, a process which only requires one master file sourced from a reference database is preferable.
One attempt to address these issues is to use envelopes which contain a transparent window. In this process, the address information is printed onto the inserted material which is folded and oriented to display the address through the window. This negates the requirement to print the address information on the envelope. However, these window envelopes also have a number of disadvantages including increased cost over standard envelopes and a lack of security due to the contents of the envelope being viewable on the occasion where information has been incorrectly inserted into the envelope.
Another significant drawback of window faced envelopes is that consumers associate this type of envelope with bills and therefore these envelopes are not favoured for the delivery of marketing material. In addition, use of window envelopes does not address another serious disadvantage of all of the bulk mailing processes outlined herein which is the expense of procuring and maintaining separate equipment for handling the envelopes and inserted material and also the associated expense with warehousing and auditing of these envelopes.
Accordingly it is an object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus which efficiently reduces the scope for mismatching of envelopes and related contents in bulk mail out processes
It is a further object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus which reduces the complexity and variety of types of handling apparatus required in bulk mailing processes.